 |
| The Sea Wolf (1930) with Jane Keith (Lorna Marsh) and Milton Sills (‘Wolf’ Larsen). |
Merisusi / Varg-Larsen / Il lupo dei mari.
Director: Alfred Santell. Year: 1930. Country: USA. Sog.: dal romanzo omonimo (1904) di Jack London. Scen.: Ralph Block, S. N. Behrman. F.: Glen MacWilliams. M.: Paul Weatherwax. Scgf.: Joseph C. Wright. Mus.: R. H. Bassett.
Int.: Milton Sills (‘Wolf’ Larsen), Jane Keith (Lorna Marsh), Raymond Hackett (Allen Rand), Mitchell Harris (‘Death’ Larsen), Nat Pendleton (Smoke), John Rogers (Mugridge), Harold Kinney (Leach), Sam Allen (Neilson), Harry Tenbrook (Axel Johnson).
Prod.: William Fox per Fox Film Corporation. DCP 4K. D.: 87’. B&W and tinted.
Jack London's novel was published in Finnish as Merisusi, translated by Helmi Krohn, Helsinki: Otava, 1915.
Helsinki premiere: 14 Sep 1931 at Apollo, distributed by O.Y. Fox Films A.B.
Restored in 2019 in 4K by 20th Century Fox in collaboration with MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art at Cineric and Audio Mechanics laboratory from a nitrate composite print held at MoMA.
Copy from 20th Century Fox.
By courtesy of Park Circus.
William Fox Presents: Rediscoveries from the Fox Film Corporation – Part II.
Viewed at Cinema Jolly, Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato, with e-subtitles in Italian by Sub-Ti Londra, 26 June 2019.
Dave Kehr (Il Cinema Ritrovato): "While Warner Bros. was struggling to film static, stage-bound musicals with their sound-on-disc Vitaphone system, Fox’s far superior sound-on-film Movietone system allowed filmmakers to explore difficult locations with an amazing freedom of action. This 1930 production is both an ambitious adaptation of the Jack London novel by director Alfred Santell (That Brennan Girl) and a technical tour-de-force, with extensive dialogue sequences recorded in the open air aboard a fully rigged museum ship anchored off Catalina Island – something unthinkable for Vitaphone."
"Starring as Wolf Larsen is Milton Sills, a silent-era star who began his career as a fellow in philosophy at the University of Chicago, until a visiting stage actor heard his lecture on Ibsen and urged him to try his luck in the theater (which may make Sills the only actor who played Wolf Larsen to have actually read Nietzsche)."
"Although he is largely forgotten today, Sills rose from Broadway to become a major figure in silent film, starring as staunchly masculine heroes in such films as Cecil B. DeMille’s Adam’s Rib (1923) and Frank Lloyd’s The Sea Hawk (1924). A thoughtful man, Sills was the author of the entry on film acting in the 1929 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica; his article includes a fascinating insight into silent performance that few historians have picked up on: “While the normal speed of the camera in filming a performance is 16 pictures a second, or 60ft. of film per minute, when the picture is projected in a theatre, it is the custom to run it at the rate of 24 pictures per second, or 90ft. per minute. This, together with the fact that the film does not record movement as adequately as the eye, makes it necessary for the actor to adopt a more deliberate tempo than that of the stage or of real life. He must learn to time his action in accordance with the requirements of the camera, making it neither too fast nor too slow – a process of education only to be acquired through experience in the studio”."
"Sadly, this was Sills’s last film – a week before its release, he died of a heart attack while playing tennis at his Santa Monica home." Dave Kehr
AA: There is a Pre-Code edge and unpredictability in this first sound film adaptation of Jack London's classic novel. Of the other adaptations I mainly remember the Warner Bros. 1941 interpretation starring Edward G. Robinson. A sense of danger and peril is ubiquitous in the present version directed by Alfred Santell.
Milton Sills's performance as Wolf Larsen can be compared with classic monsters of the horror film in the "creatures features" tradition. No doubt the same can be said about other "Wolf" Larsen impersonators, as well. His very nickname telegraphs the bestial and horrible nature of the subject, as do the names of his brother-rival (Death) and their ships (Ghost and Death). The film starts "in a port of call of lost souls".
The Sea Wolf also evokes "the procession of tyrants" aspect of Weimar cinema, to quote Kracauer. It would be easy to imagine a The Sea Wolf film adaptation starring Jannings, Klein-Rogge or Wegener. The sadistic patriarch is out to crush the young lovers. A nightmarish "Totem and Taboo" dimension is powerful in the story which is about killing the father figure of the primal horde. A fate which he richly deserves and practically invites.
Regarding Germany, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are among Wolf Larsen's favourite reading, and his mis-interpretation is not far from the Nazis. Jack London was obsessed with the idea of the Übermensch, the superman, in novels such as Martin Eden and The Sea Wolf. Wolf Larsen despises weaklings. His view of "the survival of the fittest" remains on a primordial, pre-civilized level. His death trip resembles that of Captain Ahab. Both stories are about our own death trip.
Milton Sills's performance also reminded me of Walter Huston's interpretation of the father-tyrant in William Wyler's A House Divided (1931), a Universal production screened at Bologna three years ago. Although it is a drama, a tragedy, it felt close to Universal's cycle of horror films.
As is often the case in horror films, the monster is memorable, and others remain forgettable. The 1941 Warner Bros. version stands out thanks to the strong casting of Ida Lupino and John Garfield against Robinson.
A rewarding restoration from apparently occasionally difficult (soft) sources.
SYNOPSIS FROM THE AFI CATALOG ONLINE
"Wolf" Larsen, fearsome master of the hellship Ghost , attempts in vain to attract Lorna Marsh, a prostitute in a Japanese port of call. Lorna, having first turned down the offer to ship on Larsen's sealer, comes aboard when Allen Rand, with whom she is infatuated, is shanghaied along with two or three sailors who are taken from the crew of a steamer belonging to Wolf's brother, "Death."
Scorned by Wolf as a helpless weakling, Rand is made assistant to Mugridge, the cook. Later Larsen promotes Rand to first mate for saving his life when the crew makes an unsuccessful attempt at mutiny.
After Wolf has made a particularly large catch of seals off the Aleutians, he determines to seduce Lorna forcibly, knocks out Rand, and is about to succeed when Death overtakes his ship.
Lorna and Rand escape in a sealing boat while Mugridge avenges a previous mutilation deliberately caused by Wolf by blinding him with a hot poker.
After days adrift, the lovers sight the Ghost, ravaged by Death. Wolf, still alive but badly injured, tries to prevent Lorna and Rand from taking supplies and leaving by casting off their boat. But Wolf knows he is dying, and he gives Lorna and Rand directions to the nearest land before he succumbs.
WIKIPEDIA: THE SEA WOLF FILM ADAPTATIONS
The Sea Wolf (1913), a silent motion picture starring Hobart Bosworth, with author Jack London appearing as an unnamed sailor
The Sea Wolf (1920), a silent motion picture starring Noah Beery (Larsen) and Tom Forman (van Weyden)
The Sea Wolf (1926), a silent motion picture starring Ralph Ince and Claire Adams (Maud)
The Sea Wolf (1930), starring Milton Sills and the former USRC Bear as the sealer Macedonia
The Sea Wolf (1941), starring Edward G. Robinson (Larsen), Ida Lupino (Ruth), and John Garfield
Wolf Larsen (1958), starring Barry Sullivan and Peter Graves
Der Seewolf (Germany, 1971, TV, 4 part miniseries), starring Raimund Harmstorf and Edward Meeks
Legend of the Sea Wolf (Italy, 1975), starring Chuck Connors and Giuseppe Pambieri
Морской волк / Morskoj volk (USSR, 1990, TV), starring Liubomiras Lauciavicius and Andrei Rudensky
The Sea Wolf (1993, TV), starring Christopher Reeve and Charles Bronson
The Sea Wolf (1997), starring Stacy Keach
Der Seewolf (ProSieben, Germany, 2008), starring Thomas Kretschmann
Sea Wolf (ZDF, Canada/Germany, 2009), starring Sebastian Koch, Stephen Campbell Moore, Neve Campbell and Tim Roth. Produced by TeleMünchen
No comments:
Post a Comment